Indigenous RESEARCH METHODOLOGY: Gluskabe's
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Rebecca Sockbeson INDIGENOUS RESEARCH METHODLOGY: GLUSKABE’S ENCOUNTERS WITH EPISTEMICIDE Postcolonial Directions in Education, 6(1), 1-27 INDIGENOUS RESEARCH METHODOLOGY: GLUSKABE’S ENCOUNTERS WITH EPISTEMICIDE Rebecca Sockbeson University of Alberta ABSTRACT Indigenous Research Methodology (IRM) and its embedded engagement with Indigenous Epistemology rises above and lives beyond the reach of the subjugating colonial project of epistemicide, the colonial intention to eradicate Indigenous ways of knowing and being, or epistemologies and ontologies. This paper offers a lens through which I make visible where, when and how particularly situated Indigenous epistemologies continue to thrive. I have selected two documents to provide critical context for the colonial and genocidal intentions of epistemicide, and to purposefully demonstrate the endurance of Waponahki epistemology, and through such evidence of presence, deliberately point out its critical relevance in contemporary schooling. Waponahki refers to the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, Mi’kmaq and Abenaki peoples who live in Maine and the Maritime Provinces of Canada and have formed a post-contact political alliance, the Wabanaki Confederacy. In this work I discuss the concept of epistemicide from a lived understanding of Indigenous research as a way of life; a way of knowing derived from many years of accumulated experiential knowledge. In an embodied and material way, I am a part of that thread of intergenerational knowledge and both benefit from and contribute to that knowledge and empirical process. My poetic renditions appear in the paper and attempt to provide further insight into the discussion. Given the Waponahki people’s continued engagement with the living Gluskabe, a spirit being and teacher in Penobscot culture, epistemicide remains an incomplete colonial project. Gluskabe’s encounters with epistemicide are those very places wherein I identify or bring to light the ongoing vitality of Indigenous epistemology, which I identify as Red Hope. Keywords Indigenous, Indigenous Research Methodology, Epistemology, Decolonization, Epistemicide, Red Hope 1 Epistemicide The intention to eradicate our people’s way of knowing & being It is not complete We are still here We are still praying We are still being Who our ancestors prayed for us to be Indigenous knowledge belongs wherever Indigenous people are We are our Indigenous communities We love our people and hold them in our souls We have the right to participate in the academy where knowledge is created, remembered, revitalized & mobilized Engagement with the epistemologies that are ancestral to us is a fundamental human right Red Hope is a call for the practice of this right Where Gluskabe thrives… -Rebecca Sockbeson Gluskabe in Penobscot culture is a spirit being, one who is also identified as a teacher (ssipsis, 2007). Numerous Gluskabe stories explain the creation of our people and tell how Gluskabe saves the people from drought and starvation. These stories remind us of our intricate relationship to the land, the cosmos, our ancestors, and to ourselves. Gluskabe’s encounters with epistemicide occur in those very places wherein I bring to light the ongoing vitality of Indigenous epistemology, and hence the Red Hope. Given the Waponahki people’s continued engagement with the living Gluskabe, epistemicide remains an incomplete colonial project. While the people’s engagement in Red Hope is a force that is saving them from the threat of their own eradication, today the killing of Gluskabe, or the processes of epistemicide, happens in subtle, and perhaps more devastating ways when compared to those of previous epochs in Indigenous history. Indigenous Research Methodology (IRM) and its rootedness in Indigenous epistemology, challenges the ongoing colonial project of epistemicide, the intention to eradicate Indigenous 2 ways of knowing and being (Santos, 2007). The original Cartesian violence separating knowing from being helped legitimate the denigration and thus erasure of Indigenous onto-epistemology. Yet, Indigenous epistemologies have survived. Through an IRM framework, I offer a lens through which processes and experiences of epistemological survival can be identified, and in some ways, understood to show that epistemicide is not complete. The ideas and findings shared in this paper are based on a larger body of research conducted during my graduate studies as a research assistant on a Community University Research Alliance (CURA) research project entitled, “Healing through Culture and Language: Research with Aboriginal peoples in Northwestern Canada.” My ongoing scholarship seeks to unearth knowledge about ancient Indigenous systems and policy-making processes, to contribute significantly to existing knowledge about incorporating Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies into educational policy-making in general, and to fuel the awakening of Waponahki knowledge into contemporary actualization and embodiment. In fulfilling these purposes in this work, policy and policy-development are shown as outcomes of Waponahki knowledge mobilization. The intersections of my personal experiences as policymaker, mother, and researcher have come together to motivate me in developing this work. This process of analysis includes interviews of tribal leaders and Elders. Their stories are based on formal interviews I conducted as well as informal conversations. I selected these tribal leaders as sources of Waponahki/Indigenous knowledge because of their integrity in important political work and their leadership roles in translating the hopes of our people into formal legislated policy. In what is now known as the state of Maine, in the USA, the Waponahki1 people, my people, are maintaining traditions that determine and ensure the capacity of our culture to thrive in those very spaces identified as Red Hope. Thus, my illustration 1 Waponahki (also written as Wabanaki) means “people of the dawn” and refers to the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, Mi’kmaq and Abenaki peoples who live in Maine and the Maritime Provinces of Canada and have formed a post-contact political alliance, the Wabanaki Confederacy. 3 of the distinctive nature of IRM demonstrates how such analytic processes underlie the activities and events of our everyday Indigenous lives. IRM does not live because of, or in relation to, epistemicide; this recent term identifies an ancient process of knowledge acquisition and knowledge understanding (Santos, 2007). We understand and live Waponahki IRM as the foundation and source of Indigenous knowledge preservation, intrinsic to our vitality as Indigenous people. IRM lives without time/space disjuncture, just as Waponahki onto-epistemology is lived as one wholeness, individually and collectively. Understanding the wholeness of Waponahki to be both knowing and being has enabled the survival of core Waponahki teachings. IRM provides a framework through which I study, and make sense of the epistemicide and articulate those understandings as acts of remembering and mobilizing Waponahki knowledge. My approach in carrying out this research has been informed by the work of Cree/Metis scholar Cora Weber-Pillwax, who speaks about understandings and intention with respect to the construction of an Indigenous research methodology. She offers the following principles to consider when developing such a methodology: (a) the interconnectedness of all living things, (b) the impact of motives and intentions on person and community, (c) the foundation of research as lived indigenous experience, (d) the groundedness of theories in indigenous epistemology, (e) the transformative nature of research, (f) the sacredness and responsibility of maintaining person and community integrity, and (g) the recognition of languages and cultures as living processes (1999, p. 31) I agree with Weber-Pillwax’s summary and I use these principles in the IRM that frames my work. In particular, “the impact of motives and intentions on person and community” is a guiding value in ensuring that my research contributes to Indigenous knowledge mobilization and the community as a whole. The significance of the term “knowledge mobilization” strikes me in the way it intimately reflects the Indigenous research principle that knowledge is to be sought primarily as a means of benefit to the people or to the collective whole from which such knowledge originates (Brown & Strega, 2005; 4 Kovach, 2010, Weber-Pillwax, 1999). The fact that the term has been adopted by the Canadian funding agencies to replace “knowledge dissemination” indicates that Canadian research criteria itself might be adjusting its standards towards more sophisticated and ancient ways of defining and talking about knowledge and its applications in ordinary lives. “Knowledge mobilization” has always been the perspective within the ways of the Waponahki peoples and also appears within the ways of other Indigenous peoples (Battiste & Henderson, 2000; Brown & Strega, 2005). IRM reconnects me with my ancestors, who are present in my research. Thus, I do not see myself as the creator of knowledge, however, I can help remember and mobilize Waponahki knowledge. Like many other Indigenous people, I understand that knowledge evolves, is transformed and evidenced through peoples’ experience. Our Elders, through their extensive experiences, hold much of our knowledge, but even they often recognize explicitly that they are still learning (Cardinal, 1977; Ermine, 1995; Penobscot Nation Oral History Project, 1993).